Maxine Kumin and I go way back.\u00a0 She came to talk to my English class when I was in the 7th or 8th grade, probably almost 40 years ago now.\u00a0 Mostly I remember that there was something vaguely subversive about her and that my English teacher was excited and proud and nervous.<\/p>\n
I liked whatever it was the poet-lady read to us, and I remembered her visit.\u00a0 Years later as an undergraduate in Cambridge, Massachusetts I frequented Groliers, the poetry book store.\u00a0 When I tried out (unsuccessfully) for The Advocate<\/i>, the literary magazine whose alumni included TS Eliot and e e cummings, it was a book of Maxine Kumin\u2019s poetry that I reviewed for them: her then recently-published The Retrieval System<\/i>.<\/p>\n
At the time, I thought I understood it. \u00a0Perhaps I liked it, sensed its authenticity perhaps, but no, I really didn\u2019t get it.\u00a0 Not the way I do now.<\/p>\n
The Retrieval System<\/i> came out when Maxine Kumin (who died earlier this year at the age of 88) was about 50.\u00a0 She was reflecting on the suicide of a close friend, the growing-away of her young adult children, the memories of her deceased parents, the changes in her body, and what it was like to still be married.\u00a0 Now I get it.\u00a0 For her, animals were the retrieval system that recalled for her the people who had left her life:<\/p>\n
\u201cFor example,
\nthe wethered goat who runs free in pasture and stable
\nwith his flecked, agate eyes and his minus-sign pupils
\nblats in the tiny voice of my former piano teacher…\u201c<\/p>\n
In honor of all those whose young adult children are coming home for the holidays and whose deceased parents are not, I offer these two gems from this collection.<\/p>\n
Changing the Children<\/strong> Soon enough, no matter how Now the varnish-black son in a tree How put an end to this cruel spell? In spring when the porcupine comes Eventually we get them back. My Father\u2019s Neckties<\/strong><\/p>\n Last night my color-blind chain-smoking father Maxine Kumin and I go way back.\u00a0 She came to talk to my English class when I was in the 7th or 8th grade, probably almost 40 years ago now.\u00a0 Mostly I remember that there was something vaguely subversive about her and that my English teacher was excited and proud and nervous. I liked whatever […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toulmin.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toulmin.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toulmin.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toulmin.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toulmin.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3360"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/toulmin.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3364,"href":"https:\/\/toulmin.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3360\/revisions\/3364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toulmin.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toulmin.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toulmin.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAnger does this.
\nWishing the furious wish
\nturns the son into a crow
\nthe daughter, a porcupine.<\/p>\n
\nwe want them to be happy
\nour little loved ones, no
\nmatter how we prod them
\ninto our sun that it may
\nshine on them, they whine
\nto stand in the dry-goods store.
\nFury slams in.
\nThe willful fury befalls.<\/p>\n
\ncrow the berater, denounces the race
\nof fathers and the golden daughter
\nall arched bristle and quill
\nleaves scribbles on the tree bark
\nwriting how The Nameless One
\naccosted her in the dark.<\/p>\n
\nDrop the son from the tree with a rifle.
\nIntroduce maggots under his feathers
\nto eat down to the pure bone of boy.<\/p>\n
\nall stealth and waddle to feed on the willows
\nstun her with one blow of the sledge
\nand the entrapped girl will fly out
\ncrying Daddy! or Danny!
\nor is it Darling?
\nand we will live all in bliss
\nfor a year and a day until
\nthe legitimate rage of parents
\nspeeds the lad off this time
\nin the uniform of a toad
\nwho spews a contagion of warts
\nwhile the girl contracts to a spider
\nforced to spin from her midseam
\nthe saliva of false repentance.<\/p>\n
\nNow they are grown up.
\nThey are much like ourselves.
\nThey wake mornings beyond cure,
\nnot a virgin among them.
\nWe are civil to one another.
\nWe stand in the kitchen
\nsIicing bread, drying spoons,
\nand tuning in to the weather.<\/p>\n
\nwho has been dead for fourteen years
\nstepped up out of a basement tie shop
\ndowntown and did not recognize me.
\nThe number he was wearing was as terrible
\nas any from my girlhood, a time of
\nugly ties and acrimony; six or seven
\nblue lightning bolts outlined in yellow.
\nAlthough this was my home town it was tacky
\nand unfamiliar, it was Rabat or Gibraltar
\nDaddy smoking his habitual
\nsquare-in-the-mouth cigarette and coughing
\nashes down the lightning jags. He was
\nmy age exactly, it was wordless, a window
\nopening on an interior we both knew
\nwhere we had loved each other, keeping it quiet.
\nWhy do I wait years and years to dream this outcome?
\nMy brothers, in whose dreams he must as surely
\nturn up wearing rep ties or polka dots clumsily
\nknotted, do not speak of their encounters.
\nWhen we die, all four of us, in
\nwhatever sequence, the designs
\nwill fall off like face masks
\nand the rayon ravel from this hazy version
\nof a man who wore hard colors recklessly
\nand hid out in the foreign
\nbargain basements of his feelings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"